A new website has been developed that features a petition against Apple to stop their unfair practices and protect developers, called Petition Apple Competition. The petition was started to lobby the FCC, to intervene on consumers behalf regarding Apple’s monopolistic behaviours in the iPhone Application marketplace. Although Apple has seemed to loosen its grip on what is Approved for the AppStore lately, we all know it's still not quite enough.

"Apple continues to make it more and more difficult for consumers to use an independent marketplace. Apple continues to behave in a controlling and anti-competition nature, such as rejecting apps like PodCaster and MailWrangler which “duplicates functionality”, as well as anti-trust allegations from rejection of apps like GVMobile and other Google Voice apps. Our goal is to inform the FCC of these allegations, so as to further their current investigation, and to take action against Apple, as we believe Apple’s actions are violating consumer rights and core American economic principles."

Petition Apple Competition only launched a few days ago and already has over 1315 signatures. The website makes a lot of valid points and uses some metaphors and similes that most of us would be familiar with, making it quite easy to understand for even the non-developers out there. My favorite being "Apple’s practices and reasoning would be similar to Microsoft preventing you from installing Firefox or Chrome browsers, saying it would “duplicate functionality”. This was actually close to the issues, as Microsoft was sued at one point for pre-installing Internet Explorer and it didn't take much effort to get noticed.

Apple’s argument of protecting users from malware does not hold water. Developer storm8 is being sued for stealing iPhone user’s phone #’s – which made it through Apple’s notorius marketplace. Other ad software embedded in apps track users’ locations. It is obvious that Apple can not protect the user – and it’s up to the marketplace and the user to take action (see Firewall iP – the first iPhone security app). The FCC/FTC/DOJ need to protect user’s freedom of choice, so users can protect themselves from malicious developers.

Whether you are a developer or general user, head on over to the site and sign the petition to support a more open community for Apple's AppStore restrictions. Pass the word along so that our fellow iPhone users know of this petitions existence. There is an FCC deadline for net neutrality that would be great to include this along in with.